


I have grown to have nothing but sharp edges (stop pretending it doesn't hurt)

by olivemartini



Series: All The Lovely Ones Have Scars [27]
Category: Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Arc Reactor, Canon, Drabble, F/M, Insecure Tony Stark, Iron Man 1, Pre-Relationship, scene where she switches the arc reactors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-10
Updated: 2018-08-10
Packaged: 2019-06-24 17:17:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15635178
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/olivemartini/pseuds/olivemartini
Summary: He needs to go to the doctor, but when he thinks of hands reaching into his chest and pictures of the arc reactor splashed across the front page of every newspaper in the country he can't stand it, so he calls for her instead, even though it's mildly life threatening and not her job and he doesn't really want Pepper to know the extent of that hunk of metal sunk down into his chest, like he's some sort of mutant.It's an incredibly bad idea.





	I have grown to have nothing but sharp edges (stop pretending it doesn't hurt)

**Author's Note:**

> To everyone who left me a comment on the last few installments- sorry that I haven't gotten back to you. I read them, and I loved them, I promise. thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me.

He needs to go to the doctor.

There is a gaping hole in his chest and shrapnel only inches away from piercing his heart, and this whole situation is like a ticking time bomb just winding down the minutes until it blows up in his face, but still, Tony can not bear sitting in front of some doctor and unbuttoning his shirt and letting the world know what those people had done. He can't stand it, the idea of hands in his chest and having to tell yet another person what happened down in the cave ( _he has not told anyone, other than a few sentences gasped out to Rhodey when he first found him, because if he doesn't think about it maybe he can forget.  Maybe if he buries it so deep it will be like nothing ever happened, like he can rewrite his own history just by force of will_ ), the security threat this will pose and the possibility of the carnage in his chest splashed across the front page of every news paper in the country, so when it comes time to change the battery slowly leeching out it's power into his veins, Tony does not call one of the many medical experts from the list that Pepper compiled.

Instead he calls Pepper, because Pepper always finds a way to be exactly what he needs whenever he needs it, and also because he need someone with tiny hands. 

He knows, even when she is standing there, that it's probably a bad idea.  Open heart surgery isn't exactly her area of expertise.  A few minutes in, and it becomes clear that it was  _definitely_ a bad idea.

"Oh, god."  She looks like she might vomit, which is slightly unfair, because if anyone has the right to be sick it's Tony, seeing as she almost ripped his ribs out and restarted his heart in the same moment.  "Never ask me to do anything like that ever again."

Tony gasps for air for a moment, waiting for the machines to go haywire, but nothing happens. There is only the two of them, her hands still dripping with the motor oil ( _he's hoping it's oil from the device and not something coming out of him, but he wouldn't be surprised- Tony would be lucky to come out of that cave without at least one incurable infection_ ) and he's still riding out the shockwaves of pain and adrenaline, marveling at the fact that his heart beat stayed steady.

 _That could power your heart beat long enough for ten lifetimes,_ Yinsen had said, and even though it would have been good enough for any other man, it was not good enough for Tony.  There was always room to improve, to expand.  Why stay with ten when you could make it to fifty?  One hundred?  It may not make him immortal but it would keep him from always thinking about the daggers lying wait in his own chest, just waiting for the day when his technology would fail and they could make their slow trek towards his heart.

Pepper is still staring at him.  DUM-E is whirring around in the background, looking for a job and finding nothing to clean, coming dangerously close the fire the extinguisher.  JARVIS is silent.

"I can't make any promises."  He tries to sit up but the pain is so bad that it takes him longer than it should to get there.  "You're the only person I've got."

It's dangerous territory, saying things like this.  They seem to slip out of him more and more often, like he had thrown all caution to the wind and decided to make his feelings blatantly obvious.  It's a gamble, but it's necessary.  He had made promises out there to the desert, to himself and to Yinsen and anyone else in his life that might have been listening, that at the end of his life, he was going to be able to look back and think it was worth something.

That he was going to stop wasting it.

That he was going to be the man that everyone kept telling him that he could be.

(If he was being honest, a lot of his promises centered around Pepper.  About taking care of her the way he should have been all along, loving her with every inch of himself for every moment of his lifetime.  For being the kind of person that she can be proud to stand beside, to spend the rest of his days trying to pay her back for all of his messes she wiped away and the wounds she healed.  He would make this all worth it, for her, just so she would stay.  Tony just wishes that he wasn't so afraid.)

(It would all be easier, if he wasn't so afraid, but there are so few things that scare him now.  It's a shame that loving her has to be one of them.)

**Author's Note:**

> come find me on Instagram @olive.writes.fanfic
> 
> (Also, who's pumped about infinity war finally coming out on DVD? Me, that's who.)


End file.
